


Breathe

by silvertonedwords (emily31594)



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Wedding Night, adorkable idiots, explicit - Freeform, lots of feelings, smut with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:47:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily31594/pseuds/silvertonedwords
Summary: My muse wanted a Newtina wedding night, and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.Part two, a little walk on the Dorset coast.





	1. Chapter 1

Newt looks up from the baby diricawl cradled in his hands. He smiles wordlessly at Tina, lifting the creature gently and replacing it in its nest. She doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of looking at Newt like this, smiling and bright-eyed and rumpled.

“How is she?”

“Oh, she’s doing well,” Newt nods. “She’s put on weight.”

“That’s wonderful. And Herbert?”

“Much better. Just worn out, I think.” His gaze catches hers, and he swallows heavily. “That should be everyone, for the night.” Something hot and pleasurable tightens in her belly at the thought.

His gaze moves around, the shed, the ladder out of the case, their coats hung side by side on a hook. And then her stockings and trousers and blouse, the locket hanging around her neck, the hair that curls about her shoulders in waves from the pins Newt’s mother had used to adjust her veil. Tina shifts under his gaze, not uncomfortable, and yet acutely aware of each of their breaths.

“You changed,” he finally says.

Tina laughs. “Yes.” The dress had been beautiful. Long and elegant, with touches of delicate lace at the hem and around the bodice. But a comfortable blouse and dark trousers suit her so much better, especially in the evening chill of the cottage. She’d left the locket on during the ceremony, tucked into the dress. “You haven’t,” she observes. Newt’s taken off his bowtie and waistcoat and has unbuttoned his shirt, but despite its newly rumpled appearance, it is unmistakably the same new shirt that Theseus persuaded (forced) him to purchase last week. Tina fingers her locket, raising an eyebrow. “Why, do you miss the gown?”

“No! Er, I mean—yes, that’s not—it _was_ stunning. Absolutely. It’s just—but I—“ He takes a few steps closer and reaches out to touch the sleeve of her cream blouse. “I like you like this.”

She takes a breath, and why does her throat feel tight at such simple words?

“Besides, er—it’s good that—“ his palm shifts on her arm, the light touch raising goosebumps. “I’m not sure I’d know how to—all the fastenings and such.”

Tina laughs. “Dress fastenings.” It’s such a Newt thing to be worried about. “Not something you’ll need extraordinary skill at. As my husband.” The word carries a thrill, and yet something about it is as natural as breathing. “Although you didn’t seem to have so much trouble after that night at the Ministry…” Newt blushes just a little. She reaches to touch his flushed skin. Neither of them had exactly been thrilled at the prospect of a night spent in the same room as nearly every Ministry official in London, but Theseus had insisted. It had been six weeks or so after she’d returned to England, and only a few weeks after they’d begun…Tina had transfigured a simpler midnight blue dress into a gown sparkling with jet beads, a swoop of fabric revealing much of her back, the vee in the front baring her neck and collarbone. Once they’d returned to his flat for the coffee and tea they often shared in the evenings, he’d pressed her up against the just-closed door. That had been the first time his lips had explored her neck so thoroughly, dipping into the sensitive hollow around her collarbone, tracing her ear until she gasped, his fingers pressing into the last few vertebrae of her spine and sliding up into her hairline. And she’d made him gasp, too, trailing her hands down his chest and back and up around the base of his skull to press him closer. She shivers at the memory.

His eyes are dark and intent when they find hers.

She reaches out and guides his mouth to hers, their kiss all deep breaths and soft pressure.

“Tina.” He swallows when they break apart, his hands coming to rest on her waist. She closes her eyes and drops her forehead to his, her finger following the curve of his ear.

They stay like that for a moment, breathing against each other with her thumb softly skimming along his jaw and his tracing her ribs through her blouse. She feels his wedding band against her stomach. One solid gold band, unadorned, like her parents’ rings. Tina thinks they both need a moment.

It is not nerves, really, or the anticipation of this moment, or even the fact that neither of them has ever done this before. Kisses have, for weeks—months, even—given way to bolder and bolder touch. She’s kissed her way down his chest and felt his scarred back beneath her palms. They’ve kissed on the sofa with their bodies pressed too close to breathe properly, and their lips and legs have tangled until he groaned and pressed his face into her neck like he couldn’t breathe without her. Accidental grazes of his wrists across her breasts have taught him how sensitive she is, and she’s guided his hands and then his mouth there to touch.

But this. To be completely bare to each other. To know that this is the first day of a lifetime. There is an enormity to it that feels as much emotional as physical, that makes her chest tight even as her body aches to press him closer.

“You know that I’ve never…”

They’re too close for her to open her eyes and see him, but she can feel his breath rushing across her cheek. “I know. Neither have I.”

“I know.”

He wets his lips, and her fingers tighten against his neck. “What if we’re rubbish at it?”

“Newt.” She pulls back so that they can look at each other, and his expression melts her. The heat and love and genuine concern. As if he might let her down. As if he could. She searches out his hand and kisses the inside of his wrist. He takes a sharp breath in, fingers digging into hers. Then, she presses his hand over her pounding heart. His eyes flit to hers, studying them, and then he lifts their free hands and does the same, though with his half-unbuttoned shirt, her palm touches his bare skin. His heart is beating as quickly as hers. “Have you ever seen a creature be _rubbish_ at this?” She emphasizes the Britishism in a teasing tone, but her words are serious.

He looks down. “Mostly not. There is, well, there’s this spider that muggles call a black widow. Sometimes, when they’ve finished…the females kill and consume the males.”

Tina smiles,then laughs lightly.

He smiles in return, and then his expression grows more serious. “I have a feeling it would be a—good death, in this case.”’

Tina kisses him. Newt opens his mouth eagerly, his hand looping around her to tug her closer, warm between her shoulder blades. His tongue swipes over hers, and she whimpers.

His touch is so gentle in counterpoint to their fierce kiss, one thumb stroking over her back, the other hand spread across her neck. He chokes on a breath when her lips move first to his ear, then his neck, her teeth grazing his skin.

He slides a hand into her hair, his gasps rushing over her ears. He’s incredibly sensitive, easy to wind up. That much she already knows. She skims her nails lightly over his neck, up into his hair and across his scalp.

“ _Merlin’s beard_ ,” he pants.

She huffs a laugh into his skin, and then his hand finds its way beneath her blouse and his calloused and scarred fingers skim across her belly and around her waist. Her jaw falls open. “ _Newt_.”

He hums as her lips still and her forehead drops onto his shoulder. They’ve done this before—Merlin, they’ve touched much more than this before—but the slow, reverent way he explores her skin is _doing_ things to her. “I don’t think we will be,” she manages, a whine pushing its way into her throat when he kisses her neck, “bad at this.” He lets out a quiet, choked sort of moan when her lips brush his shoulder, and she explores the reaction further, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the juncture of his shoulder and neck, letting her teeth graze the skin as an afterthought.

“N—,” he stutters, searching out her lips for a bruising kiss, his hands spread around her waist, and she feels like she fits here, like all those times the girls in her dormitory used to tease her, _Porpentina doesn’t like kissing_ and _she’s too cold to ever warm someone else’s bed_ couldn’t possibly touch her when she’s with Newt like this. “No—“

She tugs at his hair, dragging his lips back to hers and swallowing his moan.

The palm she settles on his chest rises and falls with his heaving breaths, and they cling and tug and stumble until Newt backs into a nearby bench.

They still for a moment.

She touches his hair. She has mussed it to an even more heightened state of rumpledness, and if his bright, dark eyes and swollen lips are anything like hers, they must look quite the pair.

“You’ll stop me?” he requests, hands skimming over her hips, down to her thighs. “If anything—if you need me to stop, or—if it doesn’t feel good?”

She nods, teeth tugging at her lower lip. “Of course. And you will, too,” she requests.

“Yes.” He lifts his head for another kiss as he sinks onto the bench and reaches for her.

They shift and settle until her legs rest on either side of his, their hips flush together. “ _Oh._ ”

Newt groans. She shifts experimentally and he groans again, a rich, deep, involuntary sound that sends a thrill through her.

They’ve been like this a few times before. On the sofa a few weeks ago, and that other time in the hammock, and once against the door, with his thigh slotted between hers, she’d felt…

But he’d kissed her neck or her chin and pulled away after a few minutes each time, unembarrassed by his body’s natural reaction but not yet ready to push things further.

She threads her hands into his hair again, dragging her fingers against his scalp and guiding his mouth to hers. Like this, she’s a few inches taller than him, and she takes advantage, coaxing his head back and sliding her tongue against his.

His hand works its way beneath the collar of her blouse, pushing it aside, and then he’s trailing his lips down to kiss the top of her breast.

“ _Newt_ ,” she gasps. She tugs his hair, her eyes squeezing shut as his lips skim over the edge of the white silk brassiere she hadn’t bothered to change.

A firm press of his tongue over her nipple sends her hips jolting into his. His arm tightens around her waist to keep them balanced. “You’re alright,” he soothes as he keeps up the touch, tongue pressing firmly over one breast through the thin fabric. He moves to her the breast and she clutches him to her, shuddering as pleasure pools in her groin.

She rocks again, breath stuttering at the bit of friction she finally finds against his thigh.

Their hips slot together perfectly for a breath. Newt jolts and clings. “ _Tina._ ” His voice is rough, pleading. When he lifts his head, her fingers tighten in his hair and a rush of arousal floods through her belly. The _want_ in his eyes, the heat and vulnerability and _trust._

She loses herself in his gaze for a breath, and then she loops her arms around his neck and presses closer, trying to find that angle again.

“Mmph,” Newt groans, his lips falling open. Her thumb traces his parted lips, and she shivers as his hips arch to meet hers.

But the bench is hard on her knees and legs, and they can’t keep up this angle. “Newt,” she manages, hands clenching when he stills her rocking with his hands on her thighs and his lips cover her nipple again, “bed.”

“Yes, _yes_ ,” he agrees, tongue darting out onto the bare skin just beside her brassiere. “Bed.”

They kiss, open-mouthed and a little desperate. She stands on wobbly legs, feeling the loss of all that touch. His fingers threading through hers anchors them both.

They make it to the top of the ladder and out into the cottage bedroom, hands brushing and lingering. There must be a storm brewing tonight. The air is heavy with damp and in the distance she can hear waves cresting against the ocean shore.

“I’m glad you thought of this place.” The bedroom in his family’s seaside cottage is small and cozy. There’s a simple double bed against the window, its bedding a collection of creams and browns, a rug softening the wooden floor.

Newt nods.

Tina glances at the bed. “We should…” she toes off her shoes, watching as Newt does the same.

Newt reaches to cradle her face. “I love you,” he whispers roughly, eyes trained on hers.

She smiles softly. “I love you.” She brushes his hair from his forehead.

He brings her hand to his lips and kisses her ring finger. Warmth fills his eyes.

The short distance and layers of clothes between them suddenly seem intolerable. She tugs at the hem of his shirt.

Newt obliges, lifting the garment over his head and tossing it aside. He fingers the hem of hers, a question in his eyes, and with her nod, he rids her of that as well.

He’s seen everything they’ve bared before, rucking up her blouse during some their more passionate kisses in the past months, her belly and her shoulders, her upper chest and back. But still he seems to take a moment to study her. His calloused finger is a whisper of a touch as he traces the birth mark beneath one breast, his thumb fitting over the scar from auror training beside her belly button. The locket knocks against her bare skin, the metal cold where she is warm, and heat pools under his touch.

She’s seen him shirtless many times before. Caring for creatures leads to frequently wet or filthy or stained shirts that must be changed. And yet the sight of him always takes her breath away. She reaches out to touch a particularly long mottled mark that runs along his ribs.

“What?” He breathes. The way he shivers under her touch tells her how much it affects him. But it’s not because of the scar. To him, she knows, it is nothing special. He is neither proud of nor embarrassed by his scars. They are the natural result of the work he loves, and nothing more.

But to her, each one is a reminder of the kind, passionate, extraordinary man she’s fallen so deeply in love with. “I love you,” she settles on. There aren’t words for the rest of it. And that sums it up pretty well.

He smiles broadly, the expression filling his eyes.

“Would you…” She turns around, sliding the straps of her brassiere off her shoulders.

She hears him step closer, and then his hands graze the back of her neck. He drops a kiss to the top of her spine.

The light brush of his fingers as he undoes the fastenings makes her shiver. The garment falls to the floor. He moves her hair out of the way and lifts the locket over her head, and she listens to his soft steps, hearing the soft clicks of the chain being set down. He walks back until she can feel his breath on her shoulder. Tina turns around. Exposed. Wanting.

His index finger traces across her collarbone, over the swell of her breast, and then his hand covers one breast completely, feeling its weight. Her gaze drops, but his free hand gently lifts her chin, and he smiles at her so warmly that she feels the heat of it in her belly. “You’re beautiful,” he says plainly. Then, as if to himself, “I wonder…” He bends forward, watching his finger trace around her nipple, and then he replaces the touch with his lips.

She sucks in a breath. _Mercy Lewis,_ that feels…

“Good?” he murmurs. The vibration of his voice against the sensitive skin and the drag of his tongue makes her toes curl.

She swallows hard and nods, then realizes he cannot see her. “ _Yes,_ I—“ His teeth graze her, just lightly, and her knees tremble. “ _Do that again_.”

She feels him smile into her skin and burrows a hand in his hair as he touches her The sensation is so much heavier on bare skin. He laves at her other breast, and she writhes. She tugs and tugs at his hair until his lips return to hers, urging him back towards the bed. Her tongue find that spot behind Newt’s ear and he sucks in a breath against hers, his hands flexing at her waist. They collapse onto the bed.

She trails her lips down his neck as he clings to her, over the ridges of a claw mark and down the thin line on his shoulder where a baby niffler had slipped and dug in to stay upright. Her hands and then her lips explore his bare chest, until she finds a particularly deep mark that runs from his shoulder across to the top of his ribs. Her tongue darts out to taste it.

His hand grasps hers.

She looks up. “I don’t know why I—“

He swallows, eyes dark, and rasps, “felt good.”

“Oh.” They way their eyes meet sends a thrill of pleasure through her.

She places a thumb on a bite mark just below his collarbone, then bends down to find it with her lips. His hand clenches in hers, and she grows bolder, her lips and tongue searching out mark after mark across his chest.

“Tina,” he pleads after several minutes. She can see and feel his heavy breaths beneath her, the way each new touch affects him. “Come here.”

She stretches out to kiss him, her bare breasts against his warm and muscled and scar-marked chest, his hand burrowing in her hair. His lips drag over hers and his hand moves from her hair, to her neck, her back, down and around and over her breast. _Need_ courses through her, heated and overwhelming. “Can I—“ She touches the waistband of his trousers, and he nods. Emboldened by his groan, she reaches down and brushes her fingers against him over the fabric.

He whines.

“Shh,” she soothes, reaching for the fastenings. She tugs at the waist of them, and they are a laughing tangle of limbs until they finally manage and he is bare.

Tina looks down, touching him with one careful, curious finger, then two. He squirms. She spreads out her hand, moving down the length of him once, twice, and his rich groan, the way he presses up into her touch, sends a shock of arousal through her.“ _Tina.”_ He sits up enough to cover her mouth with his, teeth grazing her bottom lip, his hand resting on her hip. “Can I—yours?” He finds the buttons easily enough once she nods, and she shifts away to rid herself of the last of her clothing.

His hands move around her hips, skim across her back, graze tortuously over her breasts. She burrows her hands in his hair and then settles herself in his lap, trembling at the thought of how wonderful it had felt before. But now their bodies press together _everywhere_ and this is…Oh, _oh, this is…_

She bends to kiss his neck, finding the sensitive spots that tear exquisite sounds from his throat. His hands skim lower and lower, searching, until they brush over her and she bucks into his hand. He laughs lightly and kisses her shoulder, his fingers touching that spot over and over. She grips his arms and whimpers. “I’ve got you,” his lips on her jaw, and one arm lifting her up and up, turning until her back rests on soft blankets. She’s relieved she no longer has to keep herself upright.

His fingers circle that spot and sensation drowns her. Through her dizzy, delirious gaze, she can see the way he’s studying her reactions, like a creature whose habits he wants to master. With anyone else she’d feel so dangerously exposed, rocking down into his touch, whimpering when the pleasure is particularly acute, but his gaze is comfortable and familiar, and his determination enthralling. With his hand still on her, he bends forward and takes her nipple in his mouth.

Her hips arc off the bed, her mouth falling open. “Mm—“ She threats a hand into his hair, sighing when he hums in encouragement at the scrape of her fingers over his scalp. She arches up into his hand, and, when that isn’t enough, wraps a leg around his to tug him closer. His head drops forward with his groan, his hands falling away so that he can hold himself up. “Newt,” she pleads, arching up into him. Their bodies brush together, a shock of pleasure, and she thinks she cannot tell the difference between her breaths and his.

“Yes,” he breathes, “yes, I—“ shifting until their bodies line up. He searches out her eyes one last time, and she nods, hand fumbling beside her head until it lands on his. His eyes fall shut with his gasp, and the hand not holding him upright touches her lips, slides down her neck and chest, over her thigh. He squeezes his eyes shut as a rough, broken sound tears through him.

“Newt. Are you alright?”

“Mm—yes, it’s just—“ she shifts her legs, and they both inhale sharply at the way they brush together. “It’s a lot.”

She flattens her palm on his chest, over his pounding heart. It is. So much.

His thumb strokes her inner thigh. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

She shakes her head. “You won’t.”

“Tina.”

“Promise,” she whispers.

His hand leaves her thigh, and her eyes slide shut as she forces herself to relax muscles growing tense with anticipation.

Slowly, gently, he sinks inside her. He groans above her, the sound echoing in her own skin, and she can feel in his chest, tense under her palm, can hear in his stuttering breath how hard he’s working to move slowly. The strange pressure morphs into pleasure, almost before she has noticed. A heavy, unfurling wave. “ _Mercy Lewis_ ,” she pants.

He stills when they’re fully joined. “Are you—should I—“ he manages, his voice tight.

She grasps his hips before he can pull away. She doesn’t think she could handle that. “Good, Newt,” she whispers brokenly. Her voice doesn’t seem to be working. “ _Wonderful._ ”

“Oh,” he chokes out, shifting just slightly, and the spark of pleasure takes her breath away. “That’s— _yes_.”

He moves a searching hand onto her belly, up below her breast, and then he grazes one nipple with his thumb. She gasps, jerking into him, and he bucks towards her in response, and _yes_ that’s…

“Can I—“ His voice is wrecked, his breath rushing over her in stuttering waves.

“ _Move,”_ she whispers, straining to skim her fingertips along his neck. “Newt, _please_.”

His eyes find hers, dark and warm. He swallows, and finally she feels him shift inside her.

“ _Oh,”_ The pressure morphs into pleasure so quickly this time that it robs her of her breath, at once too much and not enough. “ _Newt.”_

Newt huffs out a breath, moaning when their gazes meet, and she feels the vibrations _everywhere_.

He bends to nose along her jaw, and she clings to his shoulders. “Tina,” he says. The backs of his fingers trail along her jaw, hips finding a slow, shallow roll. They both whimper. His strained voice seems to fill her in a way it never has before, the tenderness of it making her throat tight. “Remember to breathe, darling.”

“Mm,” she hums, filling her lungs with a shallow breath.

Newt lets out a sound almost like a laugh, but tense and stumbling.

He keeps making these little shocked whimpering sounds with each thrust. She’s never going to forget them. Her hands slide around his back, tugging for _more,_ and at his next thrust, she arches up to meet him. They both moan as it urges him deeper.

She manages to angle her mouth up onto his, an inelegant, desperate kiss of bumping noses and his mouth falling open against hers. She lifts her leg around his hip to anchor them.

“ _There_ ,” she gasps into his mouth. “Newt, _again_.” Something about the angle leaves her panting, feverishly trying to find it again.

She chases after his lips as he guides her back onto the blankets, lifting her leg higher. And then he sinks into her again, and her head presses back into the pillows, a cry torn from her lips. Her lips fall open and he reaches to cradle her face, smoothing a thumb across her cheekbone. “There you go. That’s it.”

He’s determined now, finding that angle over and over, his hand moving down and down until it covers her breast. She stares up at him through each stretch that pushes her higher, higher, heat flooding her at how broken he looks.

His scars are warm and familiar under her touch. “I should—“

Newt huffs a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “I’m good, yes. Better than…very, very good.”

Still, she manages to work her hands up into his hair, nails raking over the sensitive skin of his neck.

He splutters and moves faster.

The times they'd been half clothed and tangled together, her pleasure had built slowly. This takes her by surprise. His thumb searching and pressing into that _spot_ between them, his grunts vibrating on her skin, his hips shoving against hers as though he could bury himself in her skin. He snaps his hips once, twice, her fingers twisting in the blankets and digging into his chest, everything inside her clenching and trembling, and then she soars, shaking and grasping and choking on her cry as she falls.

He rolls against her a few more times, each movement ricocheting through her like a spark, his eyes pressed shut, and then he groans, grabbing at her hips and shuddering with release.

They breathe, ragged and loud and relieved.

Newt collapses beside her, his face pressed into his neck, his arm draped over her stomach.

She touches his messy hair. It takes a few moments before she’s caught her breath enough to speak. “How do the spiders manage to eat the males at this point? I don’t want to move.”

Newt laughs, kissing her neck, and the touch makes her shiver agreeably. “Well, copulation lasts longer if the female consumes the male. And then, it seems, it’s more likely that she won’t find a second mate, and his genetic line will continue.”

Tina huffs a laugh, and it’s like she’s falling in love all over again with this unusual, wonderful, extraordinary man. Then he lifts his head to kiss her, and for a moment she forgets that they’d been talking. They’re so close and sweaty and pressed together in a way that _should_ be strange to her. And it feels like this is exactly where she’s supposed to be.

“That was…” He doesn’t seem to have the words.

She turns to face him, touching his swollen lips, her fingers trailing beside his bright eyes. He kisses her palm. Tears fill her eyes and spill over, unexpected.

He looks immediately concerned. “What…?”

“I didn’t—I never—nobody was ever going to want any of this. I thought. With me,” she explains.

“Oh, love.” He intertwines their fingers.

“And not just…I mean, this, too,” she shifts her leg against his, “but—also, _everything._ ” She’s making no sense, she knows. But to want someone who wants her. How did they get so lucky?

“It was easy to get used to,” he says softly, his thumb stroking the back of her neck. Their eyes catch. “Wanting you. Merlin, I think it took about a day. The way you talked about the obscurus. Your memories in that death potion. How you looked around my case and your eyes lit up.” She smiles tremulously, touching his face. “But—I—to listen so carefully to what I say, and take the creatures on as your own. To _marry_ me and—Tina— _you_ wanting _me_ is…”

She cradles his jaw, searching until her gaze is falling into his. “And, yet, clearly we do.” He smiles into her hand.

“Tina?”

“Mm?” she hums, sleepy, content.

“Can I—would you?”

He kisses her jaw, tucking his face into her neck, and she resettles them until he’s cradled against her.

“I don’t think we were rubbish at that,” he says, lips grazing her still-warm skin.

Her hands glide over his back as she smiles, fingers tracing out the valleys and ridges of his scars and muscles. “I don’t think we were,” she agrees.

He kisses her neck, and without the urgency of before, it is a soothing, comforting gesture.

“Not that either of us has much basis for comparison.”

Newt smiles into her skin. “Theseus did have…quite a lot of advice on the subject last night.”

Tina grins, tucking her chin over his head. “Oh, he did, did he?”

“Mm. Good advice.” His lips again, this time against her collarbone. “To take care of you. Although the conversation itself was somewhat mortifying.”

Tina has to smile at the thought. Not that she expects he really needed the reminder.

His arms tighten around her as though to bring them impossibly closer. “Will you stay here?”

“As long as you want.”

“Forever,” he suggests.

“I don’t know. I think we’ll have to move if we want to do that again.”

He moans, so softly that she wouldn’t have heard it if he were any farther away. “Yes, okay. I would—that would be agreeable.”

Tina chuckles, until his lips search out hers and her breath finds even better use.

At the end of the weekend, they’ll have to face the world again. An impending war and her missing sister and his still-grieving brother. But she’s more certain even than when she agreed to marry him that they were right to go ahead. That if anything, those are reasons not to wait, anchored and _wanted_ and loved as they are in each others’ arms. A place to steal each others’ breath, and a place where they can get it back again.


	2. Seaside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little part two on the Dorset coast.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Tina looks back at Newt and wraps her woolen shawl more snugly around her arms.

He smiles back at her, winding his fingers in her hair and tucking it behind her ear. The ocean breeze is tossing her dark hair about her face, little wisps of it catching with each gust. The hair stays for only a few seconds, but the touch still makes her shiver agreeably; the tenderness of it, and the warmth in his eyes. His curls are in a similar state of disarray, flying in every direction, though whether from the wind or from the hour they’ve just spent in bed, she could not exactly say. 

Like her, he’s chosen a wool sweater and trousers for their walk to the beach. He hasn’t worn his waistcoat since they arrived in Dorset. Her teeth dig into her lower lip as she grins at the thought. There hasn’t really been a point in dressing in layers that she will return to the bedroom floor a few hours later, has there?

He reaches for her smile, the pads of his fingers featherlight across her lips. “It is beautiful here,” he agrees.

Tina laughs, tugging him a few steps closer to the shore and turning to watch another wave crash in. 

“You like the ocean.”

Tina looks over her shoulder and smiles at him, tilting an eyebrow as if to ask what interests him in that fact.

“I like learning new things about my wife.” His lips land on the corner of her mouth, but they sort it out easily enough when she cranes her neck to face him, smiling into a clumsy, easy kiss.

“It’s peaceful,” she finally says, laughing lightly when he wraps his arms around her waist from behind her because they really are such newlyweds, aren’t they, unable to keep their hands off of each other for even a moment. She rests her arms over his, looking around at the grassy, rocky terrain and winter grey sky and breathing in the damp air. “And alive.”

He nods in agreement, his thumb shifting in light touches at her waist. “Mother and Father brought us here once or twice when I was little. I haven’t been in a long time.”

A wave crashes onto shore. Tina watches the pull of the tide, then turns to look at him, her bright eyes alive with the wonder of it.

Newt sighs happily and drops a kiss to her neck. “We should come back. Get out of London sometimes.”

Tina smiles softly. “I’d like that.” The damp breeze is cool, but she’s content enough with Newt wrapped around her to keep them warm. 

His lips skim up her neck, his arms tightening around her, and she turns in his arms to catch them in a kiss. She buries her cool hands in his sweater, and his work their way under the layers of her shawl and sweater and blouse, the cool air and his rough skin on hers making her shiver.

He kisses her jaw, her neck, and she sighs and tugs on his hair. They stumble a little until he catches them against the rocky face of a cliff. She laughs, and then he does, his hands on her waist and their bodies so close that she feels each of his breaths against her. 

He moves one hand to skim over her hair, a delicate, gentle touch. 

She swallows and leans forward for another kiss. “I love you,” she says when they break apart, foreheads pressed together as they catch their breath.

“And I, you.” His hand shifts beneath her blouse, drawing aimless patterns over her skin, his mouth back on her sensitive neck. 

“ _Newt_ ,” she says weakly, her eyes squeezing shut and her fingers threading through his hair as she presses up into the touch.

“Home?” he suggests, his voice rough around the edges. 

“Yes,” she agrees, smiling at the word. “ _Home.”_


End file.
